The Books

Our Kind of Traitor

by John le CarreReviewed 01/03/2011

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Overview

Perry and Gail have reached a turning point in their careers and needing time out book a tennis holiday in Antigua. Perry soon finds himself playing against Dima, owner of a peninsula, a diamond encrusted gold watch, several tattoos, and a large entourage.

Dima is also a Russian money launderer, who decides Perry is his saviour.

The young couple soon find themselves embroiled in a world of intrigue, British Secret Intelligence and Russian mafia, which takes them from secret meetings in London and Paris to safe houses in the Swiss Alps, where they soon realise they are up against forces whose power extends even further than they imagined.

First Robin Soderling, then Roger Federer looking as becomingly modest and self-assured as only God can. Perry is craning forward, lips pressed tensely together. He’s in the presence.

Warm-up time. Federer mis-hits a couple of backhands; Soderling’s forehand returns are a little too waspish for a friendly exchange. Federer practises a couple of serves, alone. Soderling does the same, alone.

Practice over. Their jackets fall off them like sheaths from swords. In the pale blue corner, Federer, with a flash of red inside his collar and a matching red tick on his headband. In the white corner, Soderling, with phosphorescent yellow flashes on his sleeves and shorts.

Perry’s gaze strays back to the smoked windows, so Gail’s does too. Is that a cream-coloured blazer she sees with a gold anchor on the pocket, floating in the brown mist behind the glass? If ever there was a man not to get into the back of a taxi with, it’s Signor Emilio dell Oro, she wants to tell Perry.

But quiet: the match has begun and to the joy of the crowd, but too suddenly for Gail, Federer has broken Soderling’s serve and won his own. Now it’s Soderling to serve again. A pretty blonde ballgirl with a ponytail hands him a ball, drops a bob, and canters off again. The linesman howls as if he’s been stung. The rain’s coming on again.

Soderling has double-faulted; Federer’s triumphal march to victory has begun. Perry’s face is lit with simple awe and Gail discovers she is loving him all over again from scratch: his unaffected courage, his determination to do the right thing even if it’s wrong, his need to be loyal and his refusal to be sorry for himself. She’s his sister, friend, protector. A similar feeling must have overtaken Perry, for he grasps her hand and keeps it. Soderling is going for the French Open. Federer is going for history and Perry is going with him. Federer has won the first set 6-1. It took him just under half an hour.

The manners of the French crowd are truly beautiful, Gail decides. Federer is their hero as well as Perry’s. But they are meticulous in awarding praise to Soderling wherever praise is due. And Soderling is grateful, and shows it. He’s taking risks, which means he is also forcing errors and Federer has just committed one. To make up for it he delivers a lethal drop shot from 10 feet behind the baseline.

When Perry watches great tennis, he enters a higher, purer register. After a couple of strokes he can tell you where a rally is heading and who’s controlling it. Gail isn’t like that. She’s a groundshot girl: wallop and see what happens, is her motto. At the level she plays, it works a treat.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Heading to the books and John Le Carre's 22nd novel, set in Britain just a year or two ago as it struggled through recession. His themes as always, honour, corruption and betrayal.

NARRATOR: Perry and Gail are enjoying a tennis holiday in Antigua when Perry finds himself playing against a muscular Russian called Dima. Decked out in expensive gold jewellery, Dima makes fair-play Perry his new best friend. It turns out that Dima is a crime boss, who's chosen Perry to put him in touch with the British Secret Service. He wants to trade the secrets he knows about global money laundering in return for his family's safety. The young couple are drawn into a world of intrigue, where they realise they are up against people whose power extends further than they'd imagined.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Now, Jason, before we start the dissection of what's right and wrong, what works and doesn't, overall, enjoyability rating for this novel?

JASON STEGER: I would say, seven, seven, six out of ten in terms of enjoyability. It's not his greatest book by any means.

JASON STEGER: No, but it's still better than the last one, that's for sure.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Oh, you are so generous this evening.

MARIEKE HARDY: OK, so I've got a huge bone to pick about this book and you have to hear me out. So, we've been doing this show for about five years. We've never done Anita Loos, we've never done Annie Proulx, we've never done Carson McCullers, we've never done Alice Munro. This is the second effing John Le Carre book we've done. We do two books a months. It's not going to last forever, no matter how much anyone likes the show. There are too many books in this world to do TWO John Le Carres. I'm quite cross about it.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Well, you bring Martin Amis every second month.

MARIEKE HARDY: We've done the Rachel Papers once.

JASON STEGER: But you talk about him all the time.

MARIEKE HARDY: Fine. We can talk about John Le Carre all the time.

MARIEKE HARDY: I think it's desperately unfair...

JASON STEGER: I did mention his last one, actually.

MARIEKE HARDY: ..to do it twice. I actually think... And all those poor science fiction people on the message board who are like, 'When will you do a science-fiction book on the show?'

JENNIFER BYRNE: We're doing fantasy very soon.

MARIEKE HARDY: How angry must they be that we've done two John Le Carre novels.

JASON STEGER: He's quite an interesting writer.

MARIEKE HARDY: Well, that doesn't... don't do two, do one, discuss it and do all the other interesting writers in the world.

JENNIFER BYRNE: We're going to come back to you. You're stabbing me in the back.

MARIEKE HARDY: So cross.

ADRIAN D'HAGE: Leaving aside Marieke's views, I... When I researched Le Carre, I was surprised how much we had in common. I mean, leaving aside the acute on the E and the fact that he's marginally sold more books than I have.

JENNIFER BYRNE: D'Hage, Le Carre. I thought, 'Yeah.'

ADRIAN D'HAGE: He's a bit in front on book sales, but we both started off in the murky world of intelligence. He was in the Foreign Office in Bonn and when I was a naive lieutenant out of, graduating out of Duntroon, it was Ian Fleming, James Bond and I could see myself coming out of the surf at Bondi, discarding my scuba gear, putting on the black tie...

JENNIFER BYRNE: Psst, psst, that was Ursula Andress.

(All laugh)

JASON STEGER: Yeah, you'd have to have a bikini on. Mind you, you'd look very good.

ADRIAN D'HAGE: ..and getting into the Aston Martin and going off to the casinos. Whereas the reality was the Kingswood in the back car park at Victoria Barracks and a dusty little room and it was...

LINDA JAIVIN: Which is far more Le Carre, of course.

ADRIAN D'HAGE: Well, yeah. It's as boring as bat poo. But I really came to this book with a sense of expectation because I understand Le Carre's background and I understand his fight with the bureaucracy, but for me it was pretty heavy going.

LINDA JAIVIN: For me, a great novel always has great characters. This is a really plot-driven novel and there's nothing wrong with that. The plot races along after about page 50, for me anyway, but the problem was the characters are so cardboard that after a while I was getting the distinct taste of pulp in my mouth. Especially Gail. She really, really annoyed me... And I see Marieke nodding. Gail is this - we're told a million times - she's beautiful, she's intelligent, she's a really ambitious young barrister. For me, OK, I'm kind of going with it, but then we've got this person who's built up intelligent, career-minded, all this stuff... and what happens? What gets her invested in a story that's going to put her at risk of life, limb, her most precious relationship and her career? She meets a couple of children and she goes all clucky. She goes, 'Oh, I think these children need mothering, so I'm going to risk everything I have and get involved with this dodgy Russian mafioso family.' I didn't buy that at all.

JENNIFER BYRNE: The point being, which I think you find a bit exceptional also, it was so much. She was the walking beauty Barbie doll with motherly instincts.

MARIEKE HARDY: So, this is, OK, so page five, 'Nature had provided Gail with long, shapely legs and arms, high, small breasts, a lissom body, English skin, fine gold hair and a smile to light the gloomiest corners of life.'

JASON STEGER: So, she's just like you, except without the golden hair.

MARIEKE HARDY: Very well noted, Jason.

(Laughter)

JENNIFER BYRNE: I think it's really... I love this book. I agree, dodgy beginning, very dodgy beginning. You and I can argue over the end, 'cause I loved it, but I thought the middle was fantastic. But I agree on Gail. What about the spies, though? What about... which I think..

JASON STEGER: Viktor and Luke.

JENNIFER BYRNE: ..is what Le Carre always does best, which is the spy world.

LINDA JAIVIN: Ambivalent spies, the spies who aren't really sure that they're in the right game or in the game for the right reasons or that the game is right anymore.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Exactly.

LINDA JAIVIN: And that's good, but the thing is the whole novel centres on Gail and Perry as innocent in this world.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Jason, what do you think? I think that the spies are the heart of it.

JASON STEGER: The spies are the heart of the novel, but he's always writing about spies, isn't he? I mean, that's what he's really interested in. But...

JENNIFER BYRNE: We buy it so we can read about spies.

JASON STEGER: The trouble, I think, now is that since he wrote The Constant Gardener, he's got something he's banging on about that he really wants to get across to people. So, in The Constant Gardener it was the exploitation by the pharmaceutical companies. In this one, he's very, very concerned about laundering money. The money of big criminals going into legal tender being used by the banks.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Used by the banks to stabilise...

JASON STEGER: And the government, particularly the British Government turning a blind eye on it. And, you know, that's exactly what happens apparently. So, in that sense, he's remarkably prescient, isn't he? I do think it's a good story, but it's not an action book, is it? I don't think. It's like... I think I said to you, Adrian, it's like an espionage procedural.

JENNIFER BYRNE: At the core is Dima, will he or won't he be able to defect? Can he or can't he bring back the evidence?

JASON STEGER: Dima, I had a big problem with Dima.

MARIEKE HARDY: Exactly, speaking of the cardboard characters. Terrible Russian accent. There was an Australian tennis coach whose accent was also terrible. These characters were utterly unbelievable. Utterly unbelievable.

ADRIAN D'HAGE: But he does shine a light on the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy in the spy world is exactly the way he paints it.

MARIEKE HARDY: Not really. I found the plot plodding, convoluted. I found the book... The word that I used when I wrote... It's very 'poncy'. I thought it was a very poncy book. It was poncy in plotting...

JASON STEGER: Can you expand on that a little?

JENNIFER BYRNE: Did you not find interesting at all the fact that Perry got so lured, 'cause they did end up risking their lives and limbs.

MARIEKE HARDY: Perry was like a wet washing cloth. He was such a dull, dull character.

LINDA JAIVIN: Here was this guy who was suppose to be... He's an Oxford don of literature, who is also a...

JENNIFER BYRNE: Disenchanted.

LINDA JAIVIN: Disenchanted.

LINDA JAIVIN: He was also a champion mountain climber and brilliant tennis player and all-round paragon of male virtue.

MARIEKE HARDY: When he's not making perfect love to Gail, which happened quite often. That's how they know things are going wrong in the relationship. 'Perry, we didn't make perfect love today with our beautiful lithe bodies pressed together.' There must be something going wrong.

JENNIFER BYRNE: John Le Carre is 80, give him a bit of pleasure. I do accept... Unfold your arms.

MARIEKE HARDY: (Speaks indistinctly)

JENNIFER BYRNE: I do accept there are flaws. But I do think it wonderfully evokes betrayal.

ADRIAN D'HAGE: But I did think the ending was bloody awful.

JENNIFER BYRNE: I loved the ending.

LINDA JAIVIN: I liked the ending.

ADRIAN D'HAGE: We will agree to disagree. I thought it was awful.

JENNIFER BYRNE: Your point is a valid one.

LINDA JAIVIN: Without making any spoiler, that was the first time in the whole book that I felt for Perry.

JENNIFER BYRNE: At the end?

ADRIAN D'HAGE: It needed, in my view, an epilogue. It had so many... What happened to Natasha? What happened to Gail? What happened to Perry? What happened to them all? It needed, in my view, an epilogue.

John Le Carre has written a terribly dull book with characters that I felt little sympathy about. This is one of the few time I feel Jennifer Byrnes got it wrong. BAD book, not worth reading and nothing of real interest within the pages.

John le Carré was born David Cornwell in Dorset, in 1931. The second son for father Ronnie Cornwell, a swindler, who was imprisoned for fraud, and dabbled in politics. His father’s character is said to have inspired the novel A Perfect Spy (1986). His mother Olive left the family when le Carré was five, with her absence adding to the family secrets. It wasn’t until he was 21 that he met her again. He also has a younger half sister and brother.

Educated at Sherborne School, and unhappy there, he talked his father into sending him to Switzerland to study at the University of Berne. After completing his studies and military service in Austria, le Carré returned to England. While in Switzerland he had also met an English diplomat, and the seed was sown for his fascination with espionage.

Back in England he read modern languages at Oxford University. On completing his studies he taught at Eton for a couple of years from 1956, before joining the British foreign service, where he spent five years until 1964, first with MI5, then MI6. Having kept a low profile at Oxford, it is often claimed he was already working as a spy while there.

While in the service he met John Bingham who encouraged him to write. His first novel, a spy thriller called Call for the Dead, came out while he was still working for the service. Unable to write under his own name (which was against the rules), he used the nom de plume John le Carré (John the Square). The book was published in 1961 and later made into a film starring James Mason under the title The Deadly Affair. This was soon followed by A Murder of Quality (1962), a detective novel set in a boy’s school, and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). The story of an agent’s last assignment brought le Carré to public attention.

Following the success of this last book, le Carré began to devote himself to writing full time. He wanted to portray the intelligence world from a new standpoint, giving an alternative form to the James Bond character, and a new type of hero.

In 1954 le Carré married Alison Ann Sharp, and in the 1960’s lived on various Greek islands. Le Carré and Sharp had three children, sons Simon, Stephen and Timothy, but the marriage broke down in 1971, and in 1972 le Carré married book editor Valérie Eustace and had another son, Nicholas (who writes as Nick Harkaway). He has resided in Cornwall for more than forty years, where he owns a mile of cliff close to Land’s End.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, spy fiction ran out of steam. Le Carré was left looking for new stories, and wrote The Night Manager (1993), about drug smuggling, The Tailor of Panama (1996) about the future of the Panama Canal, Single & Single (1999) a father and son story that also dealt with the Russian Mafia, and The Constant Gardener (2000), which was set in Africa and told the story of a middle aged gardener and his younger wife, a lawyer and activist who is brutally murdered while trying to uncover an international pharmaceutical intrigue.

In 2003 he published an essay in The Times titled ‘The United States has gone mad’, protesting the war on Iraq. Richard Cohen answered in the Washington Post, saying that the essay was "the intellectual collapse of what is called the anti-war movement." And in 2006, he contributed to a volume of political essays entitled "Not One More Death." The book is highly critical of the war in Iraq. Other contributors include Harold Pinter, Richard Dawkins, Michael Faber, and Brian Eno.

Le Carré has declined all honours offered to him, stating that he will never be Sir David. This year he also gave what he says will be his last television interviews, while discussing Our Kind of Traitor, feeling that he’s said it all already. “this is the last book about which I intend to give interviews. That isn’t because I’m in any sense retiring. I’ve found that, actually, I’ve said everything I really want to say, outside my books. I would just like—I’m in wonderful shape. I’m entering my eightieth year. I just want to devote myself entirely to writing and not to this particular art form of conversation.” (Democracy Now, 11 Oct 10)